Hamas hostage release delayed, Israel says; relief groups seek longer truce in Gaza
International aid groups say they are ready to deliver thousands of truckloads of food, water and other supplies to the besieged Gaza Strip if a temporary cease-fire in the Israel-Hamas war takes hold Thursday as hoped.
However, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s national security advisor announced in a statement released late Wednesday that the planned hostage-for-prisoner swap with the militant group Hamas has been delayed until at least Friday.
Tzachi Hanegbi said that contacts on the deal were continuing. “The release will begin according to the original agreement between the parties, and not before Friday,” he said.
The swap was to take place as part of a four-day truce in the Gaza Strip that had been expected to begin Thursday. Hanegbi gave no explanation for the delay, and it was not immediately clear when the cease-fire might begin.
The surprise announcement came after Israel and Hamas earlier Wednesday agreed to the four-day cease-fire — a diplomatic breakthrough that would free dozens of hostages held by militants as well as Palestinians imprisoned in Israel, and bring a large influx of aid to the besieged territory.
Some hailed it as an important first step, but many said Wednesday that a four-day truce isn’t enough to meet overwhelming needs after seven weeks of fighting that has displaced hundreds of thousands of Palestinians now living in miserable conditions.
Key details of the accord announced Wednesday remain unclear, including the mechanics of getting more aid to desperate civilians and escorting the first group of Israeli hostages out of the Gaza Strip, where they have been held since Hamas militants’ Oct. 7 rampage in Israel.
Aid groups say a key goal is to get help to northern Gaza, which has been largely inaccessible and where nearly all hospitals stopped working during a blistering air and ground offensive by Israeli forces.
“The entire humanitarian sector is ready to scale up once everything is set,” said Tommaso Della Longa, a spokesman for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, an umbrella organization that is the world’s largest humanitarian aid group.
The international community and aid groups have been trying to find ways to get aid into Gaza since Israel retaliated for Hamas’ Oct. 7 cross-border attack that killed at least 1,200 people. The onslaught has killed more than 13,000 people in Gaza, health officials in the Hamas-controlled enclave say.
The deal calls for a brief ‘truce’ to swap 50 hostages held by Hamas for 150 Palestinians held by Israel.
Della Longa lamented bottlenecks that he said have confounded the delivery of already insufficient aid into Gaza. He said his organization hoped a truce deal would include quicker aid shipments.
The only route for international humanitarian aid into Gaza since the start of the war has been through the Rafah crossing between Egypt and Gaza. Planeloads of supplies have been flown into the nearby Egyptian city of El Arish, and trucks have lined up near Gaza.
Intense Israeli inspections of Gaza-bound trucks and cargo have slowed their entry.
Joel Weiler, executive director of Doctors of the World, a Paris-based relief organization, said a four-day window was far too short.
“Even if the aid enters, it will take three [to] four days to deliver to doctors to get it, and then the fighting starts again,” he said. “It’s a joke. It’s whitewashing.”
Many humanitarian aid groups say shipments through Rafah amount to only a trickle compared with the total needs of Gaza’s 2.3 million people, and want the restoration of access through the Kerem Shalom crossing — the main entry point for commercial goods into Gaza from Israel. It has been shuttered since the conflict began.
“If Kerem Shalom doesn’t open, the logistical nightmare will continue forever,” said Jan Egeland, head of the Norwegian Refugee Council, an aid group with 53 workers in Gaza.
Spokesperson Shani Sasson of COGAT, the Israeli military body responsible for Palestinian affairs, said she was “not aware of any changes” at Israel’s Nitzana crossing with Egypt to accommodate greater aid deliveries during a truce. Nitzana is where Israeli authorities check aid trucks before they enter Gaza at Rafah.
Israel battled Hamas infiltrators for a third day and massed tens of thousands of troops near the Gaza Strip after the biggest attack in decades on Israeli soil.
Della Longa, of the Red Cross and Red Crescent, said freedom of movement for humanitarian convoys is another concern.
“It’s not enough to open up a gate. After opening a gate, you need to create a safe humanitarian space where we can work,” he said.
One upside is that during the four-day pause in fighting, aid groups could reach “different people, different communities and different hospitals that were not reachable before,” like in the north, Della Longa added.
Another important concern is fuel, which is in short supply. Israel has prevented virtually all fuel from getting in, except for a few small deliveries to the main United Nations agency on the ground, for fear Hamas could use it. Some aid groups say they wouldn’t be able to get enough fuel into Gaza over the four days to distribute aid to the hard-to-reach north.
“We are very restricted in who we can reach,” said Jason Lee, director of Save the Children in the Palestinian territories. “This is why we need a full cease-fire and the resumption of food, fuel and people through all available crossings.”
“Otherwise we are just Band-Aids,” he added. “And very ineffective Band-Aids.”
Uncertainty is also looming over possible arrangements for contacting Israeli hostages in Gaza.
Israel-Hamas war: In Israel, a quest to identify unrecognizable bodies. In Gaza, bodies are piled and some stored in ice cream trucks as power fails.
During the coming days, 50 hostages, all women and children, are to be released by Hamas in stages, in exchange for some 150 Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.
The militant group is believed to be holding about 240 Israelis seized during the Oct. 7 raid. Nearly 7,000 Palestinians are held by Israel on various security offenses, including about 1,800 detained since the start of the war.
Netanyahu, joined by the two other members of his special war Cabinet, said during a nationally televised news conference that the war would resume after the truce expires. Israel’s goals are to destroy Hamas’ military capabilities and return all 240 hostages held in Gaza.
“I want to be clear. The war is continuing. The war is continuing. We will continue it until we achieve all our goals,” Netanyahu said, adding he had delivered the same message in a phone call to President Biden. He also said he had instructed the Mossad spy agency to hunt down Hamas’ exiled leadership “wherever they are.”
The International Committee of the Red Cross has previously escorted hostages out of Gaza. In all, four were released since the war began.
Red Cross officials said they have not been notified of any agreement between the sides to enable visits with hostages during the truce.
“Should a visit be agreed upon, the ICRC stands ready to visit,” said the Geneva-based organization, which focuses on conflict and the rights of detainees, but does not engage in negotiations over releases.
Its president, Mirjana Spoljaric, on Monday met with Hamas’ supreme leader Ismail Haniyeh in Qatar’s capital. Qatar led weeks of indirect negotiations for a truce-for-hostages deal that also involved the United States and Egypt.
DeBre reported from Jerusalem. Associated Press writers Melanie Lidman in Tel Aviv and Jon Gambrell in Dubai contributed to this report.
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